I was feeling energized for my five meetings that day. One was with a couple who had started two successful nonprofits since their retirement. One was with a client who had a charitable foundation. Another was with a business owner and his wife who were interviewing our firm. Yet another was with a client who wanted to explore her assisted living options. And the last was with a recently widowed 50-year-old who was trying to put her life together.

I want to be clear—if I’d had to do all the prep work for these meetings, I may not have felt as energized, but our business model allows me to spend most of my time on the strategic client issues. I also want to acknowledge that not every day is filled with meetings as interesting as these.

But before I get into these client discussions, I want to ask you some simple questions. How do you want to spend your days in your practice? And with whom do you want to spend them? This means clients and co-workers. I’ve been in practice for over 30 years and have been able to adjust my work to favorably address these questions.

One of the greatest lies foisted upon society is “Do what you love and the money will follow.” Cause and effect with unrelated concepts does not necessarily work. While it is possible to love what you do and also get paid for it, that certainly isn’t always the case. More important, the underlying message is that the money has to follow in order to validate what you are doing. I know some very happy missionaries with no money and some miserable business owners with tons. So instead of that trite and inaccurate aphorism, let’s frame it differently.

One of my screen savers is a picture of concepts around the Japanese word “ikigai,” or “reason for being.” Think of it like this: Draw four circles that overlap one another. Label one “What you love,” another “What you’re good at,” the third “What you can be paid for,” and the last “What the world needs.” My objective is to increase the overlap among those four concepts. I believe what you and I do is one of the best vehicles for loving work that pays us for something we’re good at and through which we can change the world one client at a time. What is important to explore is whether you’re willing to go there. If you’re interested, let me help you by describing my five appointments on this day I’ve mentioned. Because what the world really needs is for each of us to be better listeners and better teachers.

The clients that started two nonprofits after they retired taught me about service as a tool for personal fulfillment and the importance of focus. While they were successful in their professional careers, they bootstrapped each nonprofit one after the other. When the first could stand on its own, they started the second. They didn’t do both at once. They focused on one for a few years until they felt they could let go of it. If in the meantime their other idea had been executed by someone else, they would not have minded. They were interested in serving the world rather than getting credit for a good idea.

Our company was able to help them get comfortable with their retirement and the best structures and funding mechanisms for their nonprofits while having meaningful discussions about what was important to them. The technical and the emotional are the yin and yang of financial planning. They are integrated, not independent.

The next client was left a foundation when her parents died. Our meetings have helped me further develop my own philanthropic ideals. This client did not have much experience with philanthropy until forced into the position of having to give away several hundred thousand dollars annually. While this sounds like a good problem to have, it is actually quite overwhelming. The planning was technical because we had carryforwards and tax implications.

But the emotional part was equally important.

We had discussions about what it meant to carry out her parents’ wishes and about how long she felt obligated to do so. We connected her to people in the areas she was interested in as a way to increase her personal commitment. The foundation has become her ikigai.

My third meeting was with a person who turned intellectual property into a thriving business in the 1980s, but it had fallen on hard times. He and his wife told us they had lost a couple of hundred thousand dollars last year and were on pace to do the same this year.

They were interviewing our firm to see if we would be a fit. The wife indicated she was there reluctantly because she did not believe her husband would hire an advisor (and, as of this writing, they had still not hired us). They wanted us to sell them on what we could do for them.

We started asking questions about the building they owned, which was no longer necessary for their shrinking company, as well as questions about their savings, their spending and their cash flow needs. It sounded to us as if they didn’t want to grow their business. They did have a small consulting concept. If they rented out their building, they could generate the cash they needed to live the life they wanted. We talked about how they might want to create income to use their tax losses. We discussed the husband’s fears of the market and why renting the building for cash flow would be better for them than selling the building and reinvesting into a market they were nervous about.

And we told them that they were fine. Their resources, if handled appropriately, were large enough that they could do the things they wanted.

This meeting helped me affirm that business is only a tool for getting what we want out of life.

After my co-worker and I left the meeting, we felt that regardless of whether the two became clients, we had been able to do something for them.

My fourth meeting was with a woman who went to look at assisted living facilities with her family and settled on one she couldn’t afford. I was reminded by this how important it is for clients to be in a place they’re comfortable in—it’s about who they are, not who they hope to be. We had prepared cash-flow projections that showed her spending today and what would need to change if she moved into the facility she liked. We could make the numbers work, but things would be tight. We discussed how she would feel if she were the poorest person in the complex, unable to participate in many of the activities the other residents were doing.

She quickly came to the realization that this would not be a fit for her. Again, the technical gave important background, but the discussion enabled her to reach a conclusion she was comfortable with.

The last meeting that day was with the young widow, who came in with an older sibling, an attorney who was quite strong and smart. In this meeting, I was reminded that the person with the voice is not the only one in the room. The sister had a list of questions she wanted answered, and every question we framed, the attorney sister answered.

The team could get through the technical questions. We spent most of the meeting trying to include and recognize the widow, eventually getting her involved in conversations that mattered to her. She brought up how excited she was that she completed the FAFSA and we commented on how much she had done since her husband’s death. We also were able to talk with her about how well she was set up. We had talked her out of moving when her husband was sick, and she indicated that she no longer wanted to move. When they left, both sisters ended up getting their vastly different needs met.

If your work is draining you, consider what changes you may need to make in order to experience ikigai. 

Ross Levin, CFP, is the founder and chief executive officer of Accredited Investors in Edina, Minn.